


paths

by helwolves



Category: Haikyuu!!
Genre: Casual Magic, Final Haikyuu Quest, Gen, M/M, SASO 2017, Shapeshifting
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-08-03
Updated: 2017-08-03
Packaged: 2018-12-10 20:25:13
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,046
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/11699274
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/helwolves/pseuds/helwolves
Summary: “I’m not a helpless traveler,” Kenma says, soft but steady. “Attend your own business, owl-san.”The other blinks, wringing his hands together. His eyes are less strigine now, a bit more human, a striking, stormy green. “Akaashi,” he says simply. Then, “I’m not the only thing that’s been following you. Did you know?”Kuroo may be gone, but Kenma still has reasons to enter the forest.





	paths

**Author's Note:**

> [SASO BR5 fill for DW user rielity ~~that was really bait for me~~.](http://sportsanime.dreamwidth.org/24808.html?thread=14995944#cmt14995944) Where did those 600~ extra words come from again...

Kenma isn’t used to doing these things by himself.

It’s not that he’s incapable or anything. Kuro had just always _been_ there. Heading deep into the forest to scavenge for spell materials is tedious on the best days, and Kenma doesn’t like getting tired from all that walking and digging—but he didn’t mind so much with his best friend along for a distraction (and an occasional piggyback ride home). It could even be fun sometimes.

Not that he’d ever tell Kuro that.

But now, well, Kenma can’t tell him even if he wanted to, because that idiot’s gone and turned evil, for reasons that Kenma has yet to sort out. Maybe “turned evil” is too harsh—embraced chaos? Maybe there’s something he’s trying to do without putting anyone else at risk. Which seems like a very stupid yet very Kuro thing to do. Or maybe that’s just Kenma’s wishful thinking...

Either way, Kenma is alone now, and he needs more of the petals of a certain flower, more of the thorns of a certain vine, before autumn catches him with lacking supplies.

Late-afternoon sunlight filters through the trees, splashing the mossy undergrowth with mottled greens and golds. The air is still, just past too warm to be comfortable, heavy with the dregs of an earlier thunderstorm. The map Kenma carries has a sprawling mix of his and Kuro’s handwriting on it, and some others’ as well. He pulls it out occasionally, checking that the glowing sigil that represents his own location is still moving closer to the grove where those vines should be.

It’s so boring. Kenma wishes he had something to do. If only the map were a little more interactive... If only he could read while he walked without tripping over roots and pitfalls...

If only Kuro were here...

“No, that’s enough of that,” Kenma mutters to himself, stabbing into the damp forest floor a little harder than necessary with the butt of his wooden staff.

There’s a rustling somewhere in the canopy—it’s soft, but with everything so quiet and still, with Kenma’s instinctual attentiveness, it’s impossible to miss. Kenma pads to a stop, peering out from under the oversized hood of his white cloak to take in his surroundings, at least as far as the curtain of shadows beyond the nearest trees.

He’d thought he was imagining it at first, but now, no, he’s pretty certain that dark-eyed owl’s been following him.

“What do you want?” Kenma says quietly into the clearing. He whispers a protective spell—nothing fancy, just a small precaution that settles over his skin like static in dry air.

The rustling becomes a fluttering of wings, louder and closer, and then the owl is sitting on a gnarled branch just above Kenma’s eye level. It blinks its large, piercing eyes, tilts its head far to one side and then the other.

It’s too much, too performed—that’s the mistake. Kenma can always tell the standard sorts of creatures from the ones that have gears turning somewhere in there. Sometimes it’s an outside presence, hitching a ride. Sometimes it’s—

—where there was a small, sleek owl is suddenly a storm of grey and black, stretching wider, taller, swirling and smoothing until the shape of a person forms, wrapped in a cloak of those same feathers. A few bits of fine white down float on the air, drift towards the loam.

“Why are you following me?” Kenma asks more urgently.

“I’m—” the not-owl starts, cut off by a rasping cough that sends the down floating again. “I saw you were alone, and... it’s not very safe here these days.”

“I’m not a helpless traveler,” Kenma says, soft but steady. “Attend your own business, owl-san.”

The other blinks, wringing his hands together. His eyes are less strigine now, a bit more human, a striking, stormy green. “Akaashi,” he says simply. Then, “I’m not the only thing that’s been following you. Did you know?”

Kenma flinches, startled and too slow to hide it.

“I’ve seen that cat coming around this way before,” Akaashi continues with a small frown. “I don’t like the look of it.”

“Cat?”

He’d noticed the owl, of course, and a pair of young goblins that had trailed a few yards behind him for a while before they lost their nerve, but Kenma had not noticed any cats.

“Large-ish and black, sort of scraggly...”

Kenma grips his carved staff a bit tighter. “One eye?”

Akaashi hums, looking thoughtful. He may make a convincing bird, but with eyes like that, he’d never pass for entirely human. “Perhaps? I try not to get too close to things with bigger claws than my own.”

Kenma sighs.

The uncertainty is the worst part.

Oh, he knows it’s Kuro, that much seems undeniable. But which Kuro? Is he here being his ridiculous old self, thinking he’s being sneaky, trying to watch over Kenma even now? Or is he here for—another purpose entirely? Just thinking about it is exhausting, and the daylight is running down.

Akaashi tilts his head, blinking slowly at Kenma for a moment before he speaks again. “I don’t mean to intrude, it’s just that we seem to be headed in the same direction... All three of us.”

Kenma just stares back, an unspoken _And?_ hanging in the air.

“I’ll walk with you, if you like?”

There’s no time right now for Kenma to properly analyze his reaction to this and its varied causes—an increasing wariness of continuing on alone, feeling responsible for protecting others from what he might have led here, a curiosity about the stranger with the strange eyes that prickles warm under his skin. It amounts to the same thing.

“I don’t mind,” Kenma says. He lets his hood fall back over his face.

He retrieves the map from the folds of his robe and unfurls it. It’s been a while since he last looked at it, having fallen into following familiar paths through the trees and distracted by his own thoughts.

In the inked clearing, Kenma’s white sigil glows gently, expected and unmoving. And not far off, a drifting red sigil casts its light as well.

“Something wrong?” Akaashi asks, stepping closer.

“No,” says Kenma, tucking away the map. “But we need to keep moving.”

**Author's Note:**

> [twitter](https://twitter.com/helwolves/status/893270463417274372) ★ [tumblr](https://helwolves.tumblr.com/)


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